Iconography of the PuTTY tools

Iconography of the PuTTY tools [Simon Tatham, 2025-03-12] Introduction In March 2025 I received an email asking about PuTTY’s “logo” – the icon used by the Windows executable. The sender wanted to know where it had come from, and how it had evolved over time. Sometimes I receive an email asking a question, and by the time I’ve finished answering it, I realise it’s worth turning into a blog post. This time I knew it was going to be one of those before I even started typing, because there’s a graphic design angle to the question and a technical angle. So I had a lot to say. PuTTY’s icon designs date from the late 1990s and early 2000s. They’ve never had a major stylistic redesign, but over the years, the icons have had to be re-rendered under various constraints, which made for a technical challenge as well. Hand-drawn era When I first started drawing PuTTY icons, I didn’t know I was going to need lots of them at different sizes. So I didn’t start off with any automation – I just ... Read full article.